Information Flows Like Tea
From Trading Routes to Digital Pathways - A Story of Cultural Connections
Infophilia, a Positive Psychology of Information | February 15, 2025 | Vol. 3, Issue 7
✨Welcome to Infophilia, a weekly letter exploring how our love of information and connections can help us all thrive, individually and collectively. I love learning about the unique connections new readers bring to information behaviors and styles, a love of books, cultures, gardens, technology, and more, creating a shared vision of a “grand” theory of information! Feel free to reach out anytime and do browse the Archive to see the complete collection of my writings (open access and paywalled). 🤗
Cite as: Coleman, Anita S. (2025, February 15). Information flows like tea: from trading routes to digital pathways—a story of cultural connections. Infophilia, a positive psychology of information, 3 (7).
Announcement: Last year, I had the opportunity to present an academic paper on infophilia at the Library Research Seminar 8, University of Kentucky, Lexington. After revising it for submission, the article has recently been published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Information and Knowledge Volume 62, Issue 1, February 2025, Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science (SRELS). If you’d like to read it, just let me know. Direct link: https://www.srels.org/index.php/sjim/issue/view/9705
Information flows like tea: from trading routes to digital pathways—a story of cultural connections.
The problem isn't just the bacillus—it's the pipes. And we can fix this. - Carole Cadwalladr
"We're all wading through the information sewers," declared Carole Cadwalladr in The Guardian, after the November 2024 elections. It’s a stark picture of our digital information landscape. "You have a subscription? Enjoy your clean, hygienic, fact-checked news. Then come with me into the sewers, where we will wade through what everyone else consumes... The problem isn't just the bacillus—it's the pipes. And we can fix this."
Cadwalladr’s metaphor of information infrastructure as plumbing resonates powerfully with the historical parallel I explored last week: how the East India Company's monopoly over tea trade routes mirrors today's Big Tech giants, particularly the Magnificent Seven. The control of information flow, whether through tea-laden ships or digital highways, shapes how we understand and interact with our world.
Today, I continue this exploration through two seemingly different but deeply interconnected lenses. First, we'll journey through global tea cultures, examining how they've historically served as networks of knowledge and power. Then, we'll analyze the staggering valuations of the Dutch and British East India Companies alongside today’s big tech giants, and how AI amplifies their influence over our modern information pathways.
My goal isn't to wade into politics but to illuminate the complex, interconnected technological information infrastructure that underlies our daily decisions—whether financial, health-related, or personal. While others speak of weaponized justice, weaponized media, and weaponized information, I want to disarm such rhetoric. By adopting a growth mindset, and understanding of the broad patterns of information flow and control, we can better cultivate evidence-based, infophilic approaches—a healthy infophilia—for a refreshingly smooth sail on the turbulent and treacherous seas of our digital world.